Sitges Dispatch. 4.

Looking at Wednesday's program alone reveals the sheer brilliance and open-mindedness that the Sitges festival is gaining every year. Though originally devoted exclusively to fantastic cinema, these days, festival also embraces films not exactly fantastic but at least innovative and strange in the way they approach cinematic form. And this means Sitges is the dream of every cinephile in the world - a festival where you can see, in just one day, like Wednesday, latest from directors as diverse as Werner Herzog, Tsai Ming-liang, Eli Roth, Park Chan-wook, Takashi Miike, Sally Potter and Panna Rittikrai. All of them diverse but united by the desire to excite our retina in some way or another. This is a festival of modern cinema in the best possible sense - not motivated by the politically correct but by that desire.

The Competition was dominated on Wednesday by two Asian films without very much in common, artistic import aside - one being a cold tale of revenge and the other a porn musical. We're talking about Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and The Wayward Cloud, respectively. In the first, Park Chan-wook wraps his revenge trilogy in fine form - though the film is not as brilliant as previous Oldboy, it confirms that this director is a brilliant stylist and a profound humanist who uses violence to turn us away from it. He's more Michael Haneke than Takashi Miike, and seeing his films as mere exploitation (or artsploitation) is a narrow way of seeing them indeed. As narrow as defining the brilliant The Wayward Cloud as a lame joke - Tsai Ming-liang achieves with this film a powerful aesthetic experience with a rare grace and, believe it or not, an uncommon pathos which leaves a powerful mark. More to come tomorrow.

Posted by dwhudson at October 14, 2005 9:21 AM